[Mailman-Users] bounce file questions

[Mark Sapiro]

Steve Lindemann wrote:
>
>
>1) Is it safe to delete a file hung up in mailman/qfiles/bounces?
>
>I have one
>-rw-rw---- 1 nobody mailman 3751 Jan  2 07:02 
>1199282543.316215+a0fe738c4585516ea7c4b848e2a18442fc616c5c.bak
>that I think I can delete (contents are spam anyway)


Yes, it's safe to delete. It is the backup of the file that
BounceRunner was processing when something happened, and BounceRunner
never 'finished' processing the file.  There was a hole that allowed
this to occur on an 'unparseable' (almost always spam) message in
2.1.9, no whenever you get the "Ignoring unparseable message" in the
error log, the .bak file is left behind. This is fixed in 2.1.10n now
in beta.


>2) Is it safe to delete a file "bounce-events-*.pck" hung up in 
>mailman/data?
>
>I have one
>-rw-rw---- 1 mailman mailman  5764 Jan 24 00:00 bounce-events-03252.pck
>that isn't going away.  I've watched the directory and other 
>bounce-events files have appeared and disappeared (eventually).


Apparently, 3252 was the pid of BounceRunner on Jan 2 (from the .bak
above and the Jan 2 log message. The Jan 24 log message seems to be a
retry of the 'recovered' .bak file implying BounceRunner was
restarted. If BounceRunner dies in some ways, it can leave the
bounce-events file behind. If it restarts with a new pid, the old file
is orphaned and can safely be deleted.

Actually any bounce-events file can be deleted. The worst that will
happen is you'll lose a few bounce events.


>Just out of curiosity I checked the logs and:
>
># grep 1199282543.316215 /var/log/mailman/*
>error.3:Jan 02 07:02:23 2008 (3252) Ignoring unparseable message: 
>1199282543.316215+a0fe738c4585516ea7c4b848e2a18442fc616c5c
>error.3:Jan 24 08:08:10 2008 (3281) Ignoring unparseable message: 
>1199282543.316215+a0fe738c4585516ea7c4b848e2a18442fc616c5c
>
>I'm assuming (and all that entails) that it is safe to simply delete 
>these files, but wanted to check with anyone smarter about mailman than 
>I'm likely to ever be first.  Thanks!


Yes, it's safe.

-- 
Mark Sapiro <mark at msapiro.net>        The highway is for gamblers,
San Francisco Bay Area, California    better use your sense - B. Dylan